


Harrowhark's Very Detailed Power Fantasy

by rnanqo



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Character Study, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/F, Fantasizing, Pre-Canon, a reverend daughter can dream, ~atmospheric~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rnanqo/pseuds/rnanqo
Summary: At Drearburh, Harrowhark dreams of how Gideon Nav might give in and swear herself to the Ninth.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 93





	Harrowhark's Very Detailed Power Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> CW: blood mention.

The Reverend Daughter’s routine does not allow much room for idle dreaming. But one night in Drearburh, when the services are done with, the penitents gone, and the candles snuffed out in the gloom of the chapel, Harrowhark lets her thoughts wander.

She dreams, half-seriously, lightly, of what might happen if the only person on the Ninth who actively hates her were to...not.

How nice might it be, if that galling, inveterate wretch were to accept the Ninth, and enter the fold—(enter _her_ folds, snickers a voice from the back of her skull, a voice that is only there because Harrowhark ~~reads~~ assesses all the magazines ordered to the Ninth)—enter the fold of the congregation and repent. Repent directly to the Reverend Daughter, for all the prior flippancy, heresy, and disrespect. 

Harrowhark would know it was coming. She knew everything that went on in the Ninth. She’d have marked the pacing, back and forth in the cell. The sudden halfheartedness when it came to sword practice. The nail in the coffin—(hah)—would be a journey down the dim hall to the tomb, to the rock that lay in front of it, never to be rolled away. The bowed head. The ghosting of fingertips over the rock’s gilt-black tracery. Then the resolve. The rising. The procession, slow, steady, deliberate, to the gates of Drearburh, to the chapel doors.

Harrowhark would be there, waiting. Standing like a monument with her back to the door, framed by the arches of grinning skulls, the knowing regard of the dead of the Ninth bearing witness to what would happen. She would be in full Reverend Daughter regalia. Bones down her arms, up her ears, stitched into her hood. The knucklebones of dozens of generations of Drearburh dead looped around her neck. Her paint perfect, serene. (The Chain, probably, she decides. It would be symbolic.) She is the Ninth and the Ninth is she, and she is welcoming the last wayward wanderer home. 

The chapel door creaks open. Harrowhark does not turn around. Slow, soft footsteps up the center aisle. They stop before the dais. 

Now the Reverend Daughter turns. Before her is Gideon Nav.

They regard each other for a long, silent moment. 

Eventually Harrowhark says, “I know why you’ve come.”

Gideon drops to her knees and bows her head. “I have resisted this all my life,” she says. Her voice is soft in the hush. “But I have come to accept that that was not a rational or admirable course of action. I want to serve Drearburh, my lady. My heart has been filled with devotion. I desire nothing more than to spend my life in service to the Ninth...and to you.”

“To me?” Harrowhark knows where this is going; it’s _her_ fantasy. And she can draw it out as long as she likes.

“You _are_ the Ninth, Reverend Daughter. You watch over the Locked Tomb, which I adore.” Gideon raises her head at last. “Will you accept my pledge?” 

Her eyes bore into Harrowhark’s, all gold and fire. Or maybe they’re pleading, beseeching. —No, the former. It can’t be _too_ easy. 

“That depends,” says Harrowhark. “Will you swear yourself to the Tomb in the traditional manner, with reflection and penitence, with ossicle and censer?”

“I had a different idea,” Gideon says. “It’s easiest if I just show you.”

Harrowhark considers her. Maybe the resolve on that face flickers for a second, but it’s much more fun if it doesn’t. “Then rise, Gideon Nav.”

Gideon rises to her feet. She has brought no sword with her, no armaments, no sacramental paint. She is unadorned, unweaponed, clean. 

That part never changes. What she does next, though...

The possibilities send a frisson through Harrowhark, low in her belly: the thrill of a longed-for victory. It is nice to be pledged to. The final holdout, conquered at last. 

Perhaps Gideon flings herself back down at Harrowhark’s feet. Perhaps she cries, with the force of her devotion. 

No. Too embarrassing. Harrowhark doesn’t know what she’d do if she saw Gideon cry like that—run away, probably.

Perhaps Harrowhark holds out a small bone-handled knife. Perhaps Gideon takes it, and slices her hand open over the altar, blood dripping down like—

No. Turn time back. Knit up the gash, vanish the blood. Harrowhark has never liked blood: too little thanergy, none of the solidity of bone. (Blood sacrifices? In _her_ Drearburh? It’s less likely than you think.)

Or. _Or._ Forget blood sacrifices. Forget crying. Forget ossicle and censer and the bone-handled knife. There is traditional swearing, and then there’s the way that was tradition before, in the long-ago. 

Harrowhark has seen what lies in the tomb. If she had been older, if she had been bolder, she might have sworn herself in that ancient way, with the press of lips to cold flesh. The sacramental touch. 

For the sake of this circumstance, Gideon knows this. For the sake of this what-if, Gideon, vital, bare-faced, alive, takes Harrowhark’s gloved hand, raises it to her lips, and kisses the polished ancient ring of bone that has always sat on Harrow’s fourth finger. 

Then she looks up, and says, “I pray the rock is never—”

No. Wait. What if—

What if she kept going?

She kisses the ring of bone, and then the two smaller ones next to it. Then the beaded bone bracelet lowest on Harrow’s wrist, then the three above it. Then the bangles above her elbow. As she does this—it’s a ritual, it’s expected, it’s _for a purpose_ —she murmurs the words of the prayer. 

And when she kneels again, to adore and whisper over each stitched-in sesamoid down the front of her robe, Harrowhark lets it happen. Gideon on her knees, of her own accord, is very satisfying. It is only right, only proper. It is an intricate ritual and here it makes total sense.

Then Gideon rises, the prayer passing her lips so slow it could be a lullaby.

“I pray it lives,” she says, looking Harrow right in the eye. “I pray it sleeps.”

And then she leans forward and performs the final sacramental touch.

_Yes_ . What better way for Griddle to swear? So embarrassing for her, and something that makes Harrowhark feel so powerful. Harrow’s eyes close with the press of lips on hers. Her mouth parts, unconsciously, just a little, and curves into a smile. When Gideon draws back, she is hers— _the Ninth’s_ —at last.

But.

This does not happen. Of course not. Gideon Nav is too incalcitrant, too stubborn to ever truly be Ninth, to swear herself to anything, in this or any manner. And if only this would happen—or had ever happened—Harrowhark would not be forced to do what she is about to do. 

She shakes herself back to full alertness, gathers her handfuls of bone chips, and goes to seed the landing field.


End file.
